left-4-dead-2 posts

February 1 is the shortest month of the year but so far the end of the month seems so far, far away. Why is that?

• Steam has new updates available for Magicka (its fifth patch so far) along with Blood Bowl Legendary Edition and a minor patch for Left 4 Dead 2.
• The digital download PC version of Two Worlds II is now available on Direct2Drive ahead of its retail release.
• Direct2Drive has two games on sale today for just $2 each: Luxor 3 and Righteous Kill 2.
• You still have some time to get the Wild West game Gun on sale at Impulse for just $10.
• City of Heroes has launched its latest free expansion, Issue 19: Strike Pack.

Valve continues to offer up new Mutation gameplay modes for its zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead 2. Today the latest community mutation has gone live via a new update and the new gameplay modes is for people who like to be afraid of the dark.

The Nightmare gameplay mode has the typical common infected in its campaign along with some Special infected that have been "beefed up" to an unknown degree. But in Nightmare mode there are no glows for the player character and the maps are filled with fog. In other words, an infected could pounce on you without prior visual warnings. The mutation will be on Valve's servers for the next two weeks.

Developer Valve continues to offer up community-made content to its zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead 2. For the next two weeks players will have the option of trying out the Riding My Jockey mutation in Versus mode. In this variation, the infected Jockeys have increased health and speed and can do more damage. The human side also have an increased hatred for the Jockey's call. Mayhem will likely ensue.

In addition to the community mutation, the newest update for Left 4 Dead 2 also adds support for "raw mouse input on PC." That means that the game now has the option of bypassing the normal Windows control panel mouse setting and can now take input directly from the mouse itself. This should make playing the game better with gaming PC mice that have high DPI settings.

You now have less that 24 hours before the third annual Steam holiday sale ends. That means you will have less than a day to take advantage of the price cuts that are available on nearly all PC games on the service. It also means that you have until 1 pm Eastern time until these extra-special price cuts (all repeats of previous one-day sales) expire:

Neverwinter Nights 2 Platinum - $9.99
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl/Call of Pripyat bundle - $4.99
Left 4 Dead 2 - $6.80
Grand Theft Auto IV + Episodes from Liberty City - $9.99
Empire/Napoleon Total War Game of the Year Edition - $24.99
The Hitman Collection - $7.49 for three-game bundle (Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman Blood Money)
Mafia 2 - $12.49
Dead Space - $6.80
Plants Vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition - $3.99
Amnesia The Dark Descent - $6.80
Need For Speed Hot Pursuit - $29.99
Killing Floor Complete Pack - $4.99

While some people will be heading out to their local hangout to toast in 2011 with some good friends (and maybe some strangers who will become good friends) others will be playing one last Left 4 Dead 2 online game for 2010. Today some of those players will check out a new Mutation gameplay mode for Valve's zombie co-op shooter.

It's called Flu Season and in today's Left 4 Dead blog update Valve says its actually a combination of two commuity-created Mutation modes: "Boomer Shooter" by SR69MMJC and "Spitters!" by Karma Jockey. Basically Flu Season gives players only Boomers and Spitters to deal with, with common infected created only by the Boomer specials. Oh, and apparently the Boomers and Spitters "amped up" to a large degree. Happy New Year.

Most game developers don't have an experimental psychologist on staff. Then again Valve isn't like most game developers. Gamasutra talked with Valve's own psychologist Mike Ambinder about one of the things Valve has done to make its game different than norm; features made specifically to assist disabled gamers.

Some of those features include a colorblind mode, closed captions and subtitles, in-game pauses for single player campaigns and others. Ambinder states that such features also benefit able gamers as well. He states, "For example, both groups of gamers benefit from the ability to pause Left 4 Dead 2 if they need to take a break or escape from the action, and the addition of subtitles allows all gamers to process the in-game dialogue/sound effects through an alternative visual medium if that is their preference."

Earlier this year Valve offered up an adorable Boomer Left 4 Dead 2 plush toy on its merchandise online store. We've been promised that this would not be the only Special infected character to be turned into a cute plush toy. This week two more of them, the Hunter and the Tank, showed up for pre-order on the store. Each toy comes with their own in-game sounds from their character from the game (batteries are naturally not included)

Unfortunately, Valve has chosen to not ship the two new Left 4 Dead 2 figures until December 27 which means you will have to give your loved one an I.O.U. note under the Christmas tree. On the plus side Valve is cutting 10 percent off the price of each toy before it ships out.

Just one more shopping week left until The Big Day arrives. Of course we prefer digital gifts and online purchases over rushing around some huge mall with screaming kids and long register lines but that's just us.

• The latest Bethesda Podcast chats briefly with Todd Howard about they pulled off last week's reveal of The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim without the general public knowing about it.
• Blizzard has a new Raynor design for its Battle.net Authenticator.
• Steam has new automatic updates for Rush (with two new levels added), Left 4 Dead 2, and Star Ruler.
• Steam also has added Winter Voices Episode 2 to its library.
• Check out this cool fan made Fallout trailer. It's spiffy.

We are getting close to the end of the year and over at developer Valve the team behind the zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead 2 is offering up a new Mutation gameplay mode for the next couple of weeks. This time its a community-developed Mutation called Special Delivery.

In a variation of the previous Hard Eight mode, Special Delivery raises the Special infected spawn cap to 10 and also removes all spawn timers. In other words, tons of chaos as you and your buddies try to shoot your way through tons of Specials. After the new year Valve plans to release new Mutations from the community every two weeks with a featured community made campaign on the off weeks.